Description: Make sure you obtain an accurate phone number for each patient you discharge and call them 2-3 days after they return home or do to a rehab or nursing facility. The purpose of this call is to find out how they are doing, whether they are complying with the recommended therapy (if not, why?), whether they have questions, when they plan to see their doctor, and what their understanding is of their illness. If you discover problems, you are expected to bring them to the attention of your team.
Submission instructions: please briefly address the following in your portfolio under discharge follow-up
- How patient was doing and whether they understood their condition, if not, why?
- Describe any adherence problems you identified and what you did to help fix it.
- Describe any barriers to follow-up and what you did to help fix it.
- Any other question that you found interesting
Evaluation criteria: You are expected to admit a minimum of 16 patients during the clerkship so you should provide a record of 16 phone calls (Sample Post-Discharge Phone Call Documentation ). If some of your patients have not been discharged at the time you rotate off the service, simply note this and there will be no penalty. If you are unsuccessful in your attempts to reach a patient, simply note that as well. In order to earn an exemplary on this assignment, you must provide a general reflection on something you learned from this experience that you think might impact your future practice of medicine. Exemplary students in general tend to go above an beyond by calling other patients on the team they knew but may not have been formally assigned to them.
I think it is important that the work you do, makes a real difference so the requirement for this competency is performing post-discharge phone calls as described above. However, there are many other aspects of this competency and we have provided you descriptions of numerous activities you can try based on your own learning needs and interests to grow your knowledge and skills in this competency. The following are links to these options.
